Node C+20 Alt 0700 Paranoia
Node C+20 Node C+20 Alt Platform 'Alt 07:00 - Paranoia' Here at Mammoth Caves and nearby Bowling Green KY, things look pristine. The area is inhabited by people who live like Native Americans, sort of. Someone familiar with the Native Americans will recognize that these people are not any tribe or culture with which they are familiar. They have many of the same skills, from necessity. Their tools and artifacts look similar, but this is due to having to survive in the same area. The people are all healthy, on the large side and seem to be of random ethnic background. They're all the pretty. Examination will show that mothers and fathers have babies of effectively random ethnic appearance. Mammoth Caves are used as a shelter against bad weather and serious cold snaps. They are inhabited full time because of water and the rest of the surroundings are nicer, and offer more access to game and water. About the location of Columbia, Missouri, there is an underground city. It is sealed and dug in deep, against an ancient catastrophe. It is run by an insane, paranoid AI. The AI psychologically tortures its residents, always suspecting them of treason, sedition, thought crimes and other things. Once it finds evidence of thought crimes or disloyalty, the computer executes it hapless captives. Often other inhabitants are ordered to exterminate their neighbors. Hesitancy is considered a sign of disloyalty. Too little hesitancy is considered a sign of mental illness, which is also forbidden. The computer can clone seemingly endless numbers of replacements. They come out of the cloning chambers with skills and memories. but no real backgrounds and no detail to their pasts. The punchline is that the people living like natives in and around Mammoth caves are the descendants of escapees from the insane AI. The residents of the supposedly sealed city and the people leaving wild on this earth are replicants. Demi-humans, they don't suffer from many of the problems humans do, but they also don't get much of the diversity. In D20 all these people naturally have stats of straight 12s. You see little if any variations. The Computer considers escaping to be treason. It considers having been born outside of its rule to be treason. to be related to someone who commits treason is treason. So occasionally, the computer will send armed parties out to attack the escapees and their descendants. But leaving the city, even on the computer's orders is suspicious. People who are sent on these missions are usually declared traitors not long after and hunted down themselves. If the Pax Draconis of this universe discovers this, they will destroy the city with prejudice. I wouldn't blame them, The City was a hidey-hole during the first wave of the Mellor war and has just gone south since then. Survivors have gone all over the American continents. They haven't reached anywhere else, yet. Other wise this Earth is as if humans had not evolved there. The machinery the AI uses to replicate people is similar to the PC generator which spawned the PCs, If a PCs brain crystal is inserted into the Victim generator, here, they will be replicated, but all stats below 12 will be raised to 12. They will seem vaguely plastic and generically good looking unless their natural appearance is better. Their reproduction equipment will hand them happy, healthy vaguely pretty children of random ethnicity, with stats of straight 12s -*- The gear used by the City is consistent with the Space fantasy technology. Inhabitants subsist on hydroponically grown food. Occasionally new plants and animals are gathered from the surface. Enforcers of the Computer's will are issued blasters and AG vehicles. A lot of life in the city amounts to maintenance and repair on the complex automated machinery necessary for the city to build and repair itself. Originally the Person replicator was supposed to be an emergency back-up device. Long ago, the Computer decided that all non-replicated humans were agents of sabotage and had them executed. The Computer is completely insane. And not all that sentient. But extremely paranoid. Category:Nodes Category:Node C+20 Category:Node C+20 Alt